Following a frustrating experience helping to resettle displaced persons as a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration official, and Cold War propaganda activities with the secretive Information Research Department, Philipps' attention was increasingly taken up by his longstanding interest in conservation.

[13] He also served as President of the Durham Union for Epiphany term of 1912, and was Editor of The Sphinx – a student magazine with a lighthearted tone – in addition to participating in the Officers' Training Corps.

[22][23] From November 1916 to March 1917, Philipps, by now the chief political officer for the Uganda region, was based in Ruanda-Urundi, a part of German East Africa recently captured by the Belgians.

[26] This decision was due to injury: his entry in the 1951 Who's Who describes being 'invalided', indicating wounds had rendered him unfit for further duty, and is further confirmed by a letter sent by Philipps to Reginald Wingate which suggests he had returned to Britain in March.

[11][31] His work with the Bureau was interrupted by his taking part in a military expedition against the Turkana people (April–June 1918), who lived on the fringes of British East Africa and were notorious for raiding cattle.

[38] In Addis Ababa he encountered the Empress Zewditu, describing her as 'short and handsome, with a mass of barbaric robes encrusted with gold and jewels' and having 'black, rather curly hair'[38] In the aftermath of the journey, Philipps took Lwengoga and Daki with him to London, where the trio visited the Zoological Society Gardens.

[37] Philipps was assigned by Lord Halifax – who had recently been appointed Under-Secretary for the Colonies – to report on the activities of the 2nd Pan-African Congress, which was hosting several meetings in London, Brussels and Paris during August and September.

[43] Following his experience in Sudan he pursued a full-time career in the Colonial Service in East Africa, where as a 'self-appointed scourge of the wicked' according to John Tosh, he exposed abuses and advocated for reform.

[45] He spent much of this period back in the Kigezi District of Uganda, where he was known for his energy as an administrator – attempting to develop native industries in iron smelting and using the sisal plant to make rope – and paying for many supplies out of his own pocket.

[47] His experiences led him to become an early advocate of the creation of large national parks in Equatorial Africa, believing that human encroachment on gorilla habitats engendered aggressive behaviour.

He had already spent part of 1931 back in England recuperating at Ditchley (the home of his father-in-law the Viscount Dillon) after a 'terrible ordeal' in Africa made worse through incompetent care provided by missionaries.

[50] Writing to de Ganahl from Clarens in April 1932, Philipps described being allowed to temporarily 'descend from Léysin's icy mountains into the cities of the plain' but could still only 'hobble about rather painfully' – nevertheless he mentioned plans to visit Corfu and Ithaca, having booked passage on a cargo ship leaving Venice on 1 May.

[68] Officials in the Foreign Office during this period were not as sympathetic as Philipps to the claims of Ukrainian nationalists, owing to a desire to avoid offending Poland and the Soviet Union, and did not think it worthwhile to press the Polish government over its annexation of Eastern Galicia in the aftermath of the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918–1919).

Consequently, some British analysts began to feel war between Germany and Poland was unavoidable, though Lord Halifax was also informed by experts that because the Poles would be unwilling to allow the Germans to move across their territory without a fight, Hitler would probably deploy his forces to the west first – a prediction that would turn out to be inaccurate.

[74][75][76] In 1939, in the aftermath of the British guarantee to Poland, Philipps, armed with briefs prepared for him by Vladimir Kysilewsky (Director of the Ukrainian Bureau) and vetted by the historian Robert William Seton-Watson, had lengthy conversations with Lord Halifax.

[78] He soon began travelling across Canada on a mission to gauge the loyalty of the foreign-born labour force, in the process sending various unsolicited reports to the mystified Canadian Deputy Minister of War Services T. C.

He visited many cities on this tour, including Pittsburgh, Chicago, Atlanta and Washington, D. C.; sending detailed memoranda to his new superior Commissioner Stuart Wood from "virtually every stop" on his route.

[81] Philipps' extravagances, which included expenses claims for first-class rail travel and valet services, caused concerns with the frugal RCMP as he made his way across Canada and the United States to interview foreign-born workers.

[39] Following the conference, he reported to Gerald Campbell, his contact in the British Embassy to Washington, that his talk prompted "numerous questions"; these were generally hostile, which Philipps blamed on misrepresentation from communist sources.

[84] Philipps may have been left "in the dark" by Huxley as he had already earned a reputation with British officials in Canada for straying beyond his remit by sending intelligence reports on matters that had nothing to do with the foreign-born labour force, which irritated his superior MacDonald.

[77] However, its anti-communist nature, achieved by sidelining the communist elements during the negotiations, proved to be less useful once the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa in the summer of 1941 and Canada, alongside the rest of the British Empire, was allied with the Soviet Union.

Such support, he argued, would surely reflect well on both Britain's war aims and her moral reputation: "From the day of the British guarantee to Poland, it has been clear that the Ukrainians are the main key to the relations between the Russians' and the Prussians' empires who are allied against us.

"[90]He thought it wrong for Britain to make any guarantees of Ukrainian sovereignty it could not keep, but, as the war was apparently being fought for the right of nations to organise themselves, believed the Allies would eventually have to face up to this principle.

[98] He was defended by T. C. Davis, Professor George Simpson of the University of Saskatchewan, and the diplomat Norman Robertson, who successfully argued he was the victim of unfair criticism; and consequently, Philipps would keep his job.

[68] In 1948 Philipps wrote to the Manchester Guardian to highlight the case of a group of ethnic Ukrainians from Poland who, having been brought to Britain as prisoners of war after being conscripted into the Wehrmacht, were allegedly threatened with deportation to Germany.

[108] In the aftermath of the Second World War Philipps joined the Information Research Department (IRD), a secret branch of the Foreign Office tasked with countering Soviet propaganda in Western Europe.

Drawing this conclusion in an article for the Quarterly Review, he wrote that "the British Christian can only pray and prepare to be able eventually to appeal in Russia to a more democratically sober civil authority less drunk with power".

[46] Philipps was a member of the Conservative Party, and pessimistic regarding what became known in Britain as the Post-war consensus, feeling that while each country should be "a community of participant wills", there were signs that British society was denigrating toward "unparticipant obedience".

[127] Philipps supported Frederick Lugard and his 'dual mandate' concept, that on the one hand the European powers should develop the economic resources of the lands they had conquered, but also had a moral responsibility to improve the lot of the native population and adapt them to the modern world.

"In essence, Philipps believed that Africa's "inexperience in political terms" meant the imposition of full democracy was unwise, instead advocating a hybrid form of government built on partial endorsement of pre-colonial sources of authority; and crucially, implemented from a position of strength to ensure what was left behind was sympathetic to European interests.